Quebec anti-radicalization centre equips teachers to counter far-right thinking in the classroom

Noémie Verhoef was taken aback when she read the paper her student handed in. 

Jews had provoked the Germans into wanting to exterminate them because of their "irrational" religious faith, he wrote. 

In the Philosophy 101 essay, the student went on to blame victims of massacres throughout history for their own persecution. 

The situation is not a one-off. 

Once or twice a semester, Verhoef — or one of her colleagues at CEGEP de Victoriaville, about 170 kilometres northeast of Montreal — comes face to face with the ideas of the far-right — budding or in full bloom — in their classrooms.

Immigrants and the transgender people are common targets. 

The far-right views these communities as "dangerous minorities that are going to subvert our culture, that they are too different from us, [and] that we can't be inclusive because they're going to change us," said Verhoef.

Facing the growing presence of the far-right in Quebec, Verhoef and fellow researchers at the Centre of Expertise and Training on Religious Fundamentalism, Political Ideologies and Radicalization (CEFIR), have launched a toolkit to help teachers understand how their students may become radicalized and how educators can respond.

The two years of junior college (CEGEP) after high school and before university is a pivotal time for Quebec teens entering adulthood, a period in which young people begin to find themselves, navigate complex ideas and try to understand the world they live in.

It is also a time when they tend to become more interested in politics, sometimes getting information from internet chat rooms as opposed to the classroom, said Verhoef.

According to Martin Geoffroy, who heads CEFIR, the polarization of society and its politics are mirrored in the schools. "The classroom in a CEGEP is a microcosm of society," he said. 

"Teachers are all too often unable to recognize the far-right discourse taking place in their classrooms before it's too late."

In a four-part series of French-language video capsules funded by Public Safety Canada, teachers are warned that failing to intervene can lead to normalization of the far-right in the classroom and can have consequences, especially on cultural and ethnic minorities.

Extreme thinking harms healthy learning environments, but teachers must proceed carefully when responding to a situation in which intolerance is expressed, the videos explain.